Benchling
Software Engineer, Data Platform (CDC & Search) (High Seniority)
Job Description
Biotechnology is rewriting life as we know it, from the medicines we take, to the crops we grow, the materials we wear, and the household goods that we rely on every day. But moving at the new speed of science requires better technology.
Benchling’s mission is to unlock the power of biotechnology. The world’s most innovative biotech companies use Benchling’s R&D Cloud to power the development of breakthrough products and accelerate time to milestone and market.
Come help us bring modern software to modern science.
ROLE OVERVIEW
At Benchling, we’re tackling some of the most complex problems in life sciences R&D—and that takes engineers who thrive on solving high-impact, systems-level challenges. As a Data Platform engineer, you’ll build the next generation of infrastructure that powers real-time scientific discovery. You’ll architect multi-tenant pipelines, develop change data capture (CDC) systems, and design scalable, privacy-aware solutions that enable our customers—scientists and researchers—to move faster and smarter. This is a rare opportunity to do deep engineering work with a clear line of sight to real-world health outcomes.
“There’s a lot of software where you don’t know if it helps the world. Here, the mission and the moment are aligned—you know your work matters.”
Whether you’re building tools that help accelerate vaccine development or scaling infrastructure for biotech R&D, your work here matters.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Own core systems end-to-end—from design and prototyping to deployment and scale.
- Build real-time data infrastructure (CDC pipelines, search indexing and more) that powers customer analytics and platform extensibility.
- Design CI/CD workflows and internal tooling that make our platform easy to operate, secure, and maintain.
- Collaborate with product managers, platform architects, and internal developers to define a shared vision for data at Benchling.
- Set standards for data integrity, privacy, and reliability across internal and customer-facing systems.
- Champion platform engineering best practices and influence how Benchling teams interact with data at scale.
QUALIFICATIONS
- You bring 10+ years of engineering experience, including 5+ years with distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Kafka, Debezium, Spark, Flink).
- You’re hands-on with infrastructure tooling like Kubernetes, Terraform, or ECS, and scripting in Python or similar.
- You value clean abstractions and solving root problems—not just shipping workarounds.
- You’re a clear communicator, both in code and in writing, and bring a collaborative spirit to technical planning.
- You may not have a background in biology—and that’s okay. Many of our best engineers come from FinTech, infrastructure, or consumer tech. What matters most is curiosity and a willingness to learn.
- You want to build for deeply technical users—scientists with PhDs doing life-changing work.
You value autonomy, iterate instead of over-planning, and seek impact over optics.
“I wasn’t building the vaccine—but I was building the tools that helped the people who did.” – Naomi, Software Engineer
“Benchling has a data variety problem, not just a data scale problem—which makes the technical work both chaotic and incredibly fun.” – Abhi, Software Engineer
Why Benchling
Engineers join us for the technical challenges—and stay for the mission and culture.
- A collaborative environment, where team members are generous with their time and ideas
- Real ownership and respect for the IC track—your impact isn’t defined by whether you manage people
- A platform that combines deep scientific domain complexity with best-in-class engineering practices
- Flexible architecture and iterative development, not rigid year-long roadmaps
- And most importantly:
“This is the most mission-aligned, technically interesting place I’ve worked—and the people are genuinely here to help each other succeed.”
HOW WE WORK
Flexible Hybrid Work: We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week.
SALARY RANGE
Benchling takes a market-based approach to pay. The candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and work location. For this role the base salary range is $214,646 – $290,404.
To help you determine which zone applies to your location, please see this resource. If you have questions regarding a specific location's zone designation, please contact a recruiter for additional information.
- Competitive total rewards package
- Broad range of medical, dental, and vision plans for employees and their dependents
- Fertility healthcare and family-forming benefits
- Four months of fully paid parental leave
- 401(k) + Employer Match
- Commuter benefits for in-office employees and a generous home office set up stipend for remote employees
- Mental health benefits, including therapy and coaching, for employees and their dependents
- Monthly Wellness stipend
- Learning and development stipend
- Generous and flexible vacation
- Company-wide Winter holiday shutdown
- Sabbaticals for 5-year and 10-year anniversaries
#LI-Hybrid
#BI-Hybrid
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Benchling welcomes everyone.
We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Please be aware that Benchling will never request personal information, payment, or sensitive details outside of Greenhouse or via email. All official communications will come from an @benchling.com email address or from an approved vendor alias. If you are contacted by someone claiming to represent Benchling and are unsure of their legitimacy, please reach out to us at [email protected] to verify the communication.
